I’ve returned from the Flash Gaming Summit in San Francisco. I’ll be blogging about it sometime in the next few days, but right now I want to highlight two sites that were cool enough to ask to interview me.

Whose Fault is That bills itself as having “interviews with wonderful people,” and they really do. Joe Bernardi and David Cole have interviewed interesting people, from cartoonists to photographers to musicians. They seem to think I’m wonderful, too, and put up an interview where I talk about Knytt and learn that my too-seldom-updated podcast has a stream-of-consciousness feel.

Good Game Get! is a blog that talks about video games in a pleasantly NGJ way. In this interview, I discuss upcoming games and my unhealthy month-long obsession with the Stargate franchise.

This is just a quick update post, with a few bits of news. First, Exploit is doing well. It’s getting generally favorable reviews and comments, and it got Daily 3rd Place on Newgrounds, as well as winning Mochi Media’s weekly Flash Game Friday contest and getting a third place in Kongregate’s weekly contest. It’s gotten linked by Jay is Games, Play This Thing!, and (niftily) Bytejacker. It’s cool seeing your game in someone else’s show!

In other news, I’m going to be attending the Flash Gaming Summit in San Francisco. “The Majesty of Colors” is up for an award there, and there should be some interesting panels. The topics are all business-focused, which is a little disappointing to my game-designer-and-analyst heart. But hey, I also like eating, so I think the panels will be useful.

The Orange Box wins in my book for best characters in a 2007 video game package. Alyx and Eli Vance, GlaDOS, and the TF2 cast together are an amazing accomplishment, especially when you realize the games were released on the same day by the same company.

Thanks in part to a rush from Armor Games, “(I Fell in Love With) The Majesty of Colors” has been played over 1,000,000 times. I can’t resist big, round milestones, and I remain overjoyed that so many people liked my little tentacle game.

As promised, my February game is finished. It’s called Exploit, and it’s a game about computer security, terrorism, and totalitarian governments.

Information is freedom. As a hotshot computer security cracker, you will solve over 50 puzzles and fight against totalitarianism, abuses of power, and terrorism. Story Mode offers a twist-filled story of international intrigue, and Challenge Mode offers 19 more puzzles to engage the mind. When it’s all done, use the built-in puzzle editor to make and share your own creations!

We all knew one. That kid who always told lies about video games. Maybe they knew a cheat code to make Lara Croft naked, or said that something special happened in Sonic if you collected 1000 rings, or that there really was a Carcer City in GTAIII that you had to be awesome to get to. Maybe you were that kid.

Do video game lies arise out of a desire to trick people, or because the liar wants to look cool? We may never know, but we can record all of these lies for posterity. Years from now, historians will be able to observe this unique bit of video game culture.

Because of positive response in a thread I started on the TIGSource forums, I’ve created a wiki at Wikia to record the odd phenomenon of video game lies. The history of video games is poorly-recorded, and this is especially true of the cultural history. The video game liar seems to be a universal experience of people who grew up around video games, and I’d like it if we could better document our experiences with it.

Visit the Video Game Lies database, and browse through the entries or add one of your own. The site’s a bit rough right now, but I’ll try and clean it up when I get the chance.

About

Ludus Novus is a podcast and accompanying blog by Gregory Avery-Weir dedicated to interactive art, including interactive fiction, digital games, and roleplaying. Here, I explore how we can take interactive art beyond just empty entertainment.